But that had been before the interminable waste of the Grass War and the long train of young women and men in front of my desk with the trinkets they thought would give them a chance of not becoming food for crows in a field somewhere.

The Spinies pressed flutes to their chest-maws and trilled a maniacal improvisation, something like Chinese opera filtered through jazz and spliced with a catfight. Not what I'd call music to die for, but my opinion didn't count much. Customs had generously allowed me to keep my pistol, after draining its battery to red. I had maybe three shots. Worse yet, if I killed someone, that was the end of my journey to sanity. I’d be deported or executed.

Nicolai was three years dead when I lighted to EZ Aquarii to forget him. Naturally he came along too.

Esthe had no acid and no knife, but she had a little light from the keycards. She bit her tongue hard and spat blood into her hand. Within it she scried, not for the first time, that Karnon Nameless Dae was not a human man. He was neininki; alien. Like all neininki, a lie would cost him his life. Having promised to kill all who sheltered the prince, he would never spare her life.

She had never imagined that she—the greatest scryer of her generation—could be lied to and tricked by her own husband.

In a special author interview for BCS Science-Fantasy Month, BCS Assistant Editor Kate Marshall talks with Chris Willrich about “The Mote-Dancer and the Firelife,” Quixotes and Sanchos, sword & sorcery and sword & planet, and how artificial augmentation in humans might impact how we would interact with alien species.

In a special author interview for BCS Science-Fantasy Month, BCS Assistant Editor Kate Marshall talks with Anne Ivy about “Scry,” alienness and hegemony, how Oedipus’s parents caused their prophesied end, and how a character who can see the future can still have free will.